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Boards Of Canada

In the field of electronic music, no one creates such organic sounds as Boards Of Canada. Artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre can at times sound warm and fuzzy, but it always feels quite detached. BoC, on the other hand, always strive to make their music as emotional as possible, transcending the usual boundaries of the genre. They can at times sound aggressive and even creepy, but the emotions always come through. There's even a very psychedelic feel to some of their work.

There are many strange references to the occult, religious death cults (David Koresh and Waco in particular) and weird mathematical phenomena in their music. There's even an ongoing controversy that the artists have inserted several subliminal messages into their songs, and considering the imagery they work with, it is normal to believe these "messages" might be of the questionable kind. The music is hypnotic and will often induce the listener into a trance. But to me, that's the beauty of BoC's sound. No matter how eerie and dark things get, there is always an underlying soothing quality to the music. It might sound quite minimal at first, but there are so many small details to discover with every listen that it is practically impossible to get tired of it. Addictive, even after the thousandth listen.

What drew me to Boards Of Canada was the cover art for Music Has The Right To Children. It looked like an old fuzzy family trip photo, but the turquoise color and faceless characters made the whole scene nightmarish and ethereal. Listening to the music inside only strengthened my first impressions. They have created a weird nostalgic atmosphere in which I could get lost. It reminded me of those old public television interludes I would see while growing up in Quebec, Canada. In fact, the name of the group is taken from the National Film Board of Canada whose films are said to have inspired their sound. I could easily label them as pioneers in electronic music as they have pushed the boundaries of what was possible within the genre and influencing so many others at the same time.

With the growth in popularity of the group, many fans have seeked the impossible to find early material by the band. The different titles were announced long ago on an early version of their homepage, but rapidly disappeared. This info was kept by a few persons and are still available on the net. Most of these earlier "releases", some have concluded, was only available to close friends of the "brothers" and should not be considered official BoC records. There is however a number of obscure mp3s which have surfaced through peer2peer applications, their vercaity is still disputed today (although, having heard them myself, I fail to see how they could not be BoC material).

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